Exclusive: Emails reveal tug-of-war over Harkin Institute

Emails obtained by the Ames Tribune show Iowa State University President Steven Leath is caught in the crossfire among members of the Iowa Board of Regents in the ongoing controversy involving ISU’s Harkin Institute of Public Policy.

The emails, obtained under Iowa’s Freedom of Information Act, show a behind-the-scenes clash among Regents President Craig Lang and members of the institute’s advisory board including Regent Ruth Harkin, who is also the wife of U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, for whom the institute is named.

Correspondence from July to November between the regents and Leath show he was taking direction from Lang and Regents president pro tem Bruce Rastetter in a discussion over how to delineate research responsibilities between the Harkin Institute and another university center.

“They are regents, all three of them, and I report to the regents, so I considered that,” Leath told the Ames Tribune Friday. “I understand the chain of command. I also respect the fact that all three of these individuals are successful, smart people, and it would be prudent, especially as a new president on campus, to listen to them.”

The release of the emails comes at the same time as a claim from Ruth Harkin that Leath told her one reason he was following Lang and Rastetter’s guidance was because he feared he would otherwise lose his job. On Friday, Leath denied he ever feared for his position.

A debate over the institute has shifted over the last week from a guarded discussion among key players into a public conversation about academic freedom and, now, the role of regents on Iowa public university campuses.

On Monday, the Harkin Institute’s advisory board voted to ask Leath to uphold the original Board of Regents document that established the institute. The proposal outlines the institute’s purpose and says it would serve as a hub for research on policy related to agriculture, education, international development, and health and human services.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) drafted last fall by two ISU deans and former provost Elizabeth Hoffman removed agriculture policy from the Harkin Institute’s territory and reaffirmed its placement in the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD), a 50-year-old agriculture institute at ISU widely recognized for its contributions to agriculture policy in Iowa and the nation.

Hoffman has said the MOU was drafted to prevent redundant and contradictory research from being conducted at two ISU institutes. In November, Leath signed a directive to replace the MOU, which he said didn’t hold weight as a legal document.

The president has repeatedly said he is working to find a resolution that satisfies both the Harkin Institute and CARD, and said he had hoped his November directive would provide a middle ground.

The directive allows the Harkin Institute to conduct agriculture research related to Tom Harkin’s papers, but says agriculture projects must be jointly authored and approved by CARD.

Regent leadership involved

The conversation has intensified since October, and correspondence between Leath, Lang and Rastetter shows the two regents were involved in revising numerous drafts of Leath’s recent directive.

Both Lang and Rastetter have remained largely out of the spotlight in recent media reports, saying they served only as advisers to Leath as discussions with the Harkin Institute progressed.

But the emails tell a different story, and show Leath was largely taking his direction from the two heads of the university’s governing board.

Emails from Oct. 22 show Leath sent a revised draft of the original MOU to both regents at their request. Aside from a paragraph at the end that gives the Harkin Institute limited abilities to do agriculture research, the MOU was identical to the one drafted in 2011 by Hoffman.

A one-line response sent that day from Lang said he “will not approve the current language.” Rastetter, who said he did not have any emails to contribute to the Freedom of Information Act request, shows up in emails submitted by Lang. In an email to Leath dated Oct. 22, Rastetter said, “Steve, let’s talk about the language I don’t think it works.”

“It seemed appropriate to send it to board leadership first,” Leath said of his correspondence with Lang and Rastetter. “I would send things to board leadership, thinking if I could get them happy, I could try to get the Harkin Institute happy. So it was kind of a give and take.”

Ruth Harkin was not sent the early drafts of the directive, the emails show and Leath confirmed.

Neither David Peterson, the interim director of the Harkin Institute, nor Catherine Kling, the interim director of CARD, show up in Leath’s email discussions about the directive.

“CARD did not have a permanent director during this recent time,” Leath said last week. “The fact that by coincidence, the two lead regents are agriculturists with a long history of working with CARD, they wanted to make sure CARD continued to be successful, continued to be prominent, continued to be one of the major voices of agriculture at Iowa State. So it was, I think, an honest productive attempt by these two individuals to make sure CARD continued to be successful as we added new programs that had some duplicity.”

Lang previously served for 10 years as the head of the Iowa Farm Bureau, and Rastetter is the CEO of Summit Group, an umbrella company for several agriculture corporations in Iowa.

Lang said he opposed early versions of the directive because the language asked CARD to control agriculture research, rather than collaborate with the Harkin Institute. Rastetter said some of the early drafts made the relationship between the two organizations confusing. They both said they hoped to act as a sounding board, but didn’t want to control the dialogue.

“I didn’t have lengthy discussions with (Leath), I didn’t sit down and say, ‘This is what you need to do,’” Lang said. “He provided me with samples and I said, ‘Well, that should work.’”

Ruth Harkin said Lang and Rastetter’s correspondence was an attempt to micromanage Leath.

Ruth Harkin, who has come under fire in recent days for her role on the institute’s advisory board, said neither she nor other members of the board were privy to specific negotiations over the MOU.

The Harkins did provide some recommendations, however. In an email dated Nov. 15 from the chairman of the institute’s advisory committee, former ISU president Greg Geoffroy sent Leath an agreement he said the Harkins had signed off on. The statement would amend the MOU and said the institute would be allowed to pursue agriculture-related research freely.

“This is a conversation about the vitality and the integrity of an institute that was established by Iowa State, and should be grown and developed by Iowa State,” Ruth Harkin said Friday. “Normally, regents wouldn’t be involved in dictating terms of operation of independent institutes.”

Regents justify involvement

Lang and Rastetter bristled at the idea that their involvement went too far.

“I certainly don’t view it as micromanaging, but supporting a president who had questions as he navigated a complicated political field,” Rastetter said Friday.

Lang said that if he had “greatly influenced stopping the Harkin Institute,” that would constitute crossing the line. Lang was one of two regents who voted against the institute when it was established in April 2011. Ruth Harkin abstained from voting.

“I would never do that,” Lang said. “I think if I would have provided information that was detrimental to anything on campus, that crosses the line, but what I was trying to do was provide information to Steve that I thought would work well for the institutes on campus and also provide him with how I felt the agriculture community across Iowa would feel.”

In response to whether she ever saw her position as a regent conflicting with her involvement on the institute advisory board, Ruth Harkin said regents are often members of advising boards at the state’s public institutions.

“I’m also on the board of visitors of the business school at the University of Iowa,” she said. “Regent Downer is on the board of the law school at (UI) … they are not policy-making boards, they are giving advice to the institution.”

Geoffroy, who served as ISU’s president for 10 years, said regents don’t tend to take a standard approach when it comes to dealing with university presidents.

“I’ve worked with maybe 30 different regents and they are all different, they have different views, different opinions,” he said. “You also never want regents to be surprised by anything.”

But Michael Gartner, a former president of the regents and a current member of the Harkin Institute board, said when you run the regents, you “let the presidents run the universities … demand strategic thinking, serve as a sounding board and a spur under the saddle, and then you get the hell out of their way.”

“You don’t micromanage,” Gartner, who was a regent for seven years, said. “You don’t get involved in ‘What’s this institute, what’s that institute doing?’ Once something is approved on the (regents’) docket, you do it.”

Gartner said Lang and Rastetter’s role as advisers on behalf of CARD’s interests was “inappropriate.”

“To have a regent acting as the de facto head of CARD? The thought is outrageous,” he said.

Ruth Harkin says Leath feared for job

On Friday, Ruth Harkin said Leath told her in a conversation in October that he wasn’t willing to remove the MOU in its entirety “because he was afraid (the regents) were going to fire him.”

“He said that to me numerous times, and he said that to numerous people as well,” she said. “I just thought that was so interesting that he was so dug in on this issue he couldn’t do the right thing because his job was threatened. I just said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ I said, ‘Don’t take my word for it, talk to some of the regents.’”

According to Ruth Harkin, Leath followed up with Regent Katie Mulholland and Regent Jack Evans.

When asked whether he ever told Ruth Harkin he was afraid of losing his job, Leath said, “Not to my knowledge.” Leath confirmed he had separate discussions with Mulholland and Evans at an ISU home football game this fall, but said the discussions were about the difficulty he was having navigating the Harkin Institute controversy.

Mulholland said she spoke with Leath on Nov. 3 at the ISU vs. Oklahoma game. She said she didn’t sense he was worried about his job performance during their conversation.

“If President Leath had the conversation with me last Saturday, or today with what went on this week in the media, I could understand him saying that, and I would put more credence in him actually saying it,” she said, “but in no way when he gave me an informational update a month ago did he (show) concern about his job.”

On Friday, Lang made a statement to Iowa Public Radio in a story about University of Iowa President Sally Mason, who is no longer working under a contract, suggesting Leath’s three-year contract might not be renewed.

He later retracted his comment, and said in a written statement, “I want to assure all Iowans that I am tremendously pleased with President Leath’s performance in the past year.”

Leath said some may speculate he had concerns about his job, but he viewed the conversation with Ruth Harkin differently.

He said he spoke with Lang, Rastetter and Ruth Harkin individually while the directive was being drafted.

“I made it clear to them as a new president, they were putting me in a very difficult spot to try and satisfy all of their competing interests on an issue they were vary passionate about,” he said. “I wanted them to understand that by the regents intervening in what would normally be a management issue, it made it very, very difficult for me.

“I thought it was prudent to broaden, make sure the rest of the regents felt comfortable with me, the approach I had, and I think that’s a more accurate portrayal. Sometimes two people can look at a situation and see it slightly differently, but that’s my take on it.”

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